


Holy Branches

by Oakley



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dead Dogs, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:27:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oakley/pseuds/Oakley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They drained the Earth to its core, taking what they thought was theirs until almost nothing was left and when the ocean reared up on its mighty hind legs and swallowed nearly all of them whole, most of them still didn’t understand why. The remaining were reminded of a truth they knew long ago – they had forgotten that the Earth is alive, not dead, only sleeping, and it will not let itself be thieved of its final thunderous breaths no matter how they writhe against it. </p><p>This is the world where Will finds him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End of the World

The end of the world came early for Wolftrap. 

Will Graham was landlocked and he was hopeful, but he couldn’t be accused of blindness. 

Will sat outside on the porch each night to watch the storm roll in, to watch the dust rise hopefully and the rain beat it back mercilessly to the ground, Winston and a few others whimpering softly about his ankles. He figured something bad was rolling in when the dogs started howling and snapping at each other. He had to drag Dorothy off of Buster one day and they both came away bloody. 

Will figured it was much, much worse when Buster and Winston got into a tussle one night and only Winston trotted back up to into the porch-light, trailing red, his blood-smothered muzzle open and panting and eagerly awaiting affection. The quiet moans of Buster did not fall upon deaf ears and Will searched feverishly for a flashlight. What he shed the light on in the bushes would startle him awake at night for years to come and when he shook from the sight of the mangled little body, Winston shuffled forward, worried, to nuzzle his hand, to lick his fingers. He pulled back coldly from the touch and went back inside, leaving Winston to sleep outdoors.

\--------------------------------------------

In the early hours, Will was kept awake by anxious yelps and whines of confusion, but when it got colder, Will shut the window and slept peacefully for a few precious hours. 

It was a short-lived peace.

Will Graham awoke at 3:27 A.M. to a great crash that shook his water off the nightstand and vicious, terrified barking. He threw off the covers and shuffled downstairs in his underwear to an eerie silence from his remaining five. The glassy whites of their eyes reflected in the little moonlight that made it through the window and all of them shifted nervously, huddled together behind the couch. He waited with them for a while, watching the windows for fear they would break. One of them, Cowlick, crawled over another to bury its head in his crotch. The Aussie whined when everything went quiet beyond the door. They waited. Will turned his head and strained his good ear… paws padding closer, collecting forward momentum, closer, and closer… the whites of his eyes shone in the little moonlight that crawled over the windowsill.

The whole left wall of the house shook when Winston crashed against the screen door. They heard a sickening crack from his body and a startled yelp when the screen came loose and fell. 

He'd heard enough. 

Will disentangled himself from the pack and moved carefully, as quietly as he could. He grabbed his gun – the same one he’d used years ago to put a bullet in a man’s bones – his coat, his shoes, his glasses, and slipped out the door. 

Winston looked black in the moonlight, the bloody child of the Wendigo cackling behind closed eyes. A low growl cut off by an admission of pain reached Will’s ears and Winston bared his teeth, red froth dripping onto his paws and into the wet grass below. He crouched low, eyes crazed and Will found him in his sights. 

Garrett Jacob Hobbs came up behind him to steady his posture. 

He turned his ice-blue lips into Will's ear and whispered, "See? See?"

Will's lip trembled when he pulled the trigger.


	2. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude

Will Graham dug until his lungs burned and his muscles weakened and he was well, well beneath the grass, until he was covered in enough sweat to justify the saltwater crawling down his cheeks. 

He hoped he would be unable to climb back out. 

He thought about that as an ending for himself, thought about dying in a hole he’d dug for his dogs, the guilt weighing his bones down like an anchor. 

Dakota yelped from inside, wondering at him worriedly, and probably at where her breakfast was. 

Will paused in his digging to listen. 

He closed his eyes and tried not to sob. 

 

Will pulled himself up out of the hole and went to feed the dogs. 

He buried Winston and Buster together behind the Oak tree, next to Abigail and his father. 

He studied them, their broken little bodies covered partially with a light layer of dirt . . . 

. . . and thought traitorously of Dr. Lecter. 

Will hurried to finish. 

When the soil had been replaced and the dogs had been fed, he called in for a visit to Baltimore State Hospital.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still sorry about the dogs. 
> 
> Maybe seeing Hannibal in the next chapter will provide some aloe.


	3. New Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody wants to be Chilton's guinea pig.

He left early as always, but rushed out the door as if he were late. He’d had to calm Dakota down three times, but by the time he’d left, she was still shaking on the porch, giving him her best worried whimper. Will watched her grow small in the rear-view and almost crashed into his mailbox because of it. 

It bothered him, but he couldn’t have known why. It bothered him all the way to the hospital and an anxious thought probed him when he got out of the car, forced him to pause: as a general rule, he didn’t ignore nagging thoughts like that.

Chilton was the same as he’d always been – a little too curious about Will’s brain, even now. He asked how he’d been sleeping and what he thought about the weather – an actual topic of conversation these days – and, as always, if he would consider changing his mind regarding tests and trials. Will could have said something, but for some reason or other, Chilton could never actually manage to wind him up enough for any venom to take root in the conversation. 

Hannibal, however, had always been a different case. 

 

“Hello, Will.” 

Dr. Hannibal Lecter did not looking up from whatever it was he was scribbling. 

“Hello, Dr. Lecter.” 

Something in Will’s tone must have given him pause. He looked up to find Will with his eyes and when he found him, Will slowly took off his glasses… to find they were speckled with blood. 

“Judging from the wrinkles and your unshaven jaw, I’m guessing you haven’t changed clothes for a few days.” 

Will let a nervous little chuckle through and he dipped his head a bit, scrubbing away what he could from the lenses with the sleeve of his shirt. He didn’t bother to tell the man he was both right and wrong. 

He didn't know why he was shaking. 

Something was different with Hannibal, but he couldn’t put his finger on it and for once, now wasn’t the right time to dwell on it. 

“You caught me.” 

Hannibal tilted his head curiously and sniffed. Will wondered morbidly if Hannibal could smell the blood. When he didn’t launch into the usual accusations, Hannibal stood from his plastic throne and – Oh god, when had he lost so much weight? – shuffled gingerly around the desk to get a better look at him. 

“And how have you been sleeping?” he smiled, a few laugh-lines evident in his aging smile.

Will returned it, taking a few blinks to process the interaction, coming to a decision from one head tilt to the next, and then resettling. He shifted from one foot to the other foot. They were breaking script and as it always did, it both confused and upset him.

“I’ve… well, generally it’s been pretty stable, but last night was definitely out of the ordinary.” 

Dr. Lecter gave him one of those non-expressions that he somehow caught the intent of through layers and layers of careful cloud-cover. 

“Out of the ordinary?” 

He prompted gently. 

Will was having trouble getting it out. 

“Yeah… um…”

Hannibal, God bless him, waited for him to find the words. 

“I killed Winston.” 

They both ignored the shuffle of discomfort from three rooms away. Chilton was never exactly subtle in his spying sessions.  
Hannibal gave him a long, unreadable look that Will had honestly never seen on the man’s face until that moment. 

“Oh.” 

He stepped forward a few paces as if to offer some comfort in closeness, hands working uselessly at his sides. 

“That is out of the ordinary.”


	4. Mr. Graham

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another short interlude.

Will Graham’s father had been a mess. 

Will's mother moved out when he was sixteen years old and his father was supposed to follow shortly. 

It ended up causing the most stressful time in his life seconded only by their divorce. 

She would come and find his father living in the basement and kick him out. 

He would always come back, twist Will’s arm some way or another and put a mattress down there. 

This happened time and time again until Will finally moved into an apartment so small he’d thought it would have been impossible to move in with him. 

He had thought wrong. 

 

Will wasn’t wanted – and he certainly wasn’t needed. 

His mother had found a new husband and a surrogate son that would fill her mind with maternal thoughts and slowly push Will out. He felt like a subtly discarded doll in the presence of his mother and that wasn't something he really cared to put forth the effort to attempt changing. 

He met the boy – man, really – once. He’d come with a casserole in hand to introduce himself with hopes of gaining a brother. Will had thought it was sort of sweet and well-mannered in a Southern Hospitality sort of way, and the casserole was good, but he couldn’t give the boy what he wanted. 

It would have been good to have someone to talk to who was more on his plane of existence, but the thought of himself in a Christmas sweater eating casserole with a strange boy who’d taken his place in his mother’s heart eventually ate at him and he had cut their friendship short before resentment would inevitably poison the painting.


	5. Coming To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will Graham emerges again before Dr. Lecter to find he's lost a bit of time.

Will's ears have begun to ring.

He moves his lips and hears the dulled sound of fingers snapping. 

Dr. Lecter is waiting patiently for him to come to. 

“Have you isolated the rest of the pack?” 

Will startled out of his head when he met Hannibal's gaze. 

He often drifted off into the past when standing across the glass from Hannibal. 

“I’m sorry?” he offered, cheeks flushing. 

“Have you isolated the rest of the pack?” Dr. Lecter repeated hurriedly. 

“I didn’t.”

Hannibal’s face changed; another strange expression. You couldn’t quite call it worry, but it obviously wanted to be. 

“Often with animals, instinct will step up when the pack leader is absent.”

A dawning understanding set in Will’s jaw. 

“Oh.” 

“Will, go home.” 

Hannibal turned his back to him, going back to his pencils and paper.


	6. Asperger's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. & Ex-Mrs. Graham make another appearance.

Asperger’s. 

It was an ugly word in Will’s mind.

Both ugly in its meaning and ugly in its connotations, what it meant socially and emotionally. 

He really should have known, he thinks later - all the repetition and the forgetfulness and the trouble with daily existence. 

When his mother slipped the diagnosis across the table, she handed him the burden. 

His father. 

Asperger’s. 

He crossed his arms and refused to drink her pity-coffee. 

He looked up into her sad, tired eye and wondered what she thought she saw. 

What she thought she recognized. 

It was on this day he quietly decided to step out of his mother’s life forever. 

 

He came home late to a drunken mess of a man passed out on his futon. He often lost control like this outside the social confines of his son’s presence. He decided not to try to have this conversation. He pulled out a blanket from a drawer in the side table and draped it over the sleeping man. Will bent down so he was eye-level with him and gently unlatched his fingers from around the bottleneck. He studied his face for some sign of forgiveness. 

Will was only human. 

He went into the kitchen and emptied it of alcohol, pouring it, all of it, down the drain. 

When Will padded quietly up the stairwell, he caught a flash of color from his father’s bedroom. 

The man never could remember to keep doors shut. 

Will let his curiosity get the best of him.

He pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped around the bed to the window. 

His father had been working on lures again. 

They were beautiful things – and he never used store-bought items. 

It was always feathers collected out in the woods, bits and pieces of the nature around him. 

Will wanted to learn how.


	7. Dead Dogs Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I purposefully didn't elaborate much on the dead dogs. 
> 
> Because dead dogs.

The drive back to the house was the worst part, really, even after what followed. 

Hannibal's words rang in his ears and his knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. 

Will let his foot sink down on the accelerator. 

 

He pulled up to a warzone. 

Bits of fur and guts everywhere he looked – stepped – in the grass. 

Will’s brain short-circuited. 

 

He didn’t know how long he stayed outside watching the grounds for some sign of movement. 

Something, anything to suggest signs of life. 

 

He eventually went inside to get a shovel and something to clean up the carnage.

But when he shuffled through the door, he heard a scratching noise and a muffled whimper from underneath the futon. 

He sank slowly to a crouching position and crawled over to the carpet to peer carefully under the seat. 

Cowlick, quaking in fear, was pressed snugly against one of the legs of the futon. 

And against all his good judgment he’d ever learned in his life, reached under to pull her out. 

Will’s hands were met with teeth and claws and fear, but he grabbed the back of her neck and heaved her out. 

She fought him for a while and so spiritedly that he had to laugh, roughly and just once, until he’d gotten her under an elbow and a knee. 

Will pulled the drawer out of the end table in his haste to get to a blanket. 

He took it in his hands and wrapped her in it as quickly as he could, only taking his knee off when she was fully covered. 

Cowlick snarled and tried to bite him again, but he pulled the blanket tighter and wrapped her in his arms and there was nothing she could do but growl and whimper in his arms. 

He rocked her slowly back and forth like he would a young child waking in fear from a nightmare. 

 

Will wondered idly where he’d learned such a thing.


	8. Untitled

Will's father taught him how to fish when he was six years old. 

Mrs. Graham always thought he was too young to be handling fish hooks and wires, but he was glad to be handed something sharp at that age and taught something useful with it. 

As most children, Will wanted to feel special - and those early mornings out on the lake filled that need in his tiny chest. He experienced something of a repeat of this experience when he was twenty five and he asked his father to teach him how to craft a lure. 

Will's father didn't talk much anymore. He used to - it used to be unbearable. It used to be all the same things, like a CD stuck on half a verse. He hardly remembered most of the phrases - mostly animal-related, strange noises, strange mannerisms. 

Everything was a dog. Will remembered that very clearly. It was funny when he was growing up. Rats were dogs, birds were dogs, cats were dogs. The man would bark at fish struggling on a wire. 

His mindless chatter used to comfort Will in the quiet of the early mornings when they went fishing. His mother never approved, but . . . she didn't have to. Especially after she so easily cut them out of her life. 

She was always afraid Will might pick up some of his father's physical or verbal mannerisms. So afraid, in fact, that she sent the boy to school early and far away for so long that his accent was nearly eradicated by the time he got back. 

Parents always leave child-rearing with some guilt. But it's always been Will's experience that most of them really deserve it. 

 

Will's father had learned to keep his mouth shut some time after he'd convinced Will to let him stay for the last time. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing given the tensions of a father and son living under one roof past the age of the first four years of college, but it made things much harder when it was time to teach Will to sew and collect things out in the wild. 

So the talking started again. It started quietly, bits and pieces at a time. Then, as if he were relearning speech, he was commenting on everything and muttering nonsense late at night. 

One morning Will heard a crash in the attic and he emerged to find his father had taken the fishing kits and strewn them about all over the floor in some unknowable fear or rage. He appeared guilty and embarrassed when Will opened the door, but quickly squatted down to the floor to resume whatever it was he was doing. 

Will decided not to ask. He went back downstairs to make some coffee. 

The noises resumed the whole time he was showering, cleaning, drinking his coffee until finally he poured himself another cup and marched back upstairs to demand the project stop. 

He knocked twice on the door before entering, a reprimand fresh and hot on his tongue. 

It died in his throat when he saw his father, one arm around his middle, the other raised, his hand supporting his chin, standing thoughtfully over row upon perfect row of hooks and lures and poles. Bits of animal fur and feathers and rocks - every piece of fishing supplies they had in and around the kits was now arranged in a near-perfect circular spiral pattern on the attic floor. 

It took Will an embarrassing amount of time to realize this wasn't normal. It wasn't just that his father was a strange, reserved man with a diagnosis of Asperger's. He was either picking up on some frequency in a fourth or fifth dimension, or he was actually losing his mind. 

"Dad." 

He said quietly, a shiver running up his spine. 

Will's father turned as if only now realizing his son was there. His eyes were blank and he reached a hand up to scratch at his nose. 

Then he looked Will dead in the eyes and said, 

"The water is coming."

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the dogs.


End file.
